


Wheat Fields

by ssjdebusk



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, M/M, Referenced Suicide Attempt (Not Main Three)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 02:32:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssjdebusk/pseuds/ssjdebusk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's that quote about telling God your plans?</p><p>Castiel is sent to Lawrence to live with his uncle and cousin. Castiel, reluctant to be away from the church he grew up in, was sure nothing good would come from moving to Lawrence. Enter Dean Winchester. </p><p>Nothing quite like fate to knock you on your ass and turn your life in a completely different direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wheat Fields

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if there are any weird name changing errors, shouldn't be but this is a destiel/original story hybrid so I'm like posting these chapters as they are required in my writing class. ANY comments, things you liked things you didn't, things you want to see are appreciated and beloved <3

Castiel spent a great deal of his time with no one to talk to. The ride to Lawrence was no exception. As he watched the Kansas scenery fly past him he couldn’t keep his eyes from finding patterns in the wheat fields. Again and again the lines formed and reformed until his eyes blurred. He knew there were no patterns and yet he couldn’t stop his eye from catching rows and pathways through the wheat like synapses in the brain. His mind drifted from thing to thing never finding substance in any of the topics he chose. Anna, the church, _senior year_. These thoughts kept him up at night over the last few days and now he couldn’t keep them in his head long enough to think about them. Like the patterns in the wheat, he mused, they disappeared as quickly as they appeared, as if they were never there at all. He thought about reading the bible or some of the books the public schools had read so he would have something, _anything_ it felt like, to discuss with his new peers. He refrained, however, knowing his headaches would get to him the best of him if he read. This part of highway was not as smooth as one would think Kansas roads would be. A land so flat you could see for endless miles, he thought, but one could still feel the bumps in the road. He was sure that had some kind of auspicious deeper meaning to the unpredictability of the universe but at the moment it was just mildly irritating.

“I’m not sure what you’re thinking Castiel but this will be a good thing,” Jeremiah said, glancing at him from the driver’s seat. He would have rode shot gun but he had an irrational fear of head-on collisions. Well, an over active imagination. Which led to a lot of visualization of head-on collisions. He bit down on his chapped lip and avoided eye contact with the mirror.

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” he muttered. He didn’t hate Jeremiah, honestly he didn’t, but his words failed to dissipate the knot in his stomach.

“You’re always thinking something Castiel,” Jeremiah said, thankfully taking his eyes off the mirror. He wasn’t sure what he meant by that. He was a rather quiet person he thought. People often referred to him as stoic or reverent, which for a boy who spent the greater majority of his time inside the walls of a church he always thought to be a good thing. Jeremiah made it sound like his silence was rooted in dishonesty or treachery, as if the act of thinking was a crime, dangerous. It caused the pit in his stomach to grow. It wasn’t that he was deceitful; it was that no one wanted to hear the truth as he saw it, plainly. Better to keep mum than to be cursed for your words. He thinks his mom used to say that, or maybe he read it somewhere, no way to really know now. Jeremiah knew his opinion, but he voiced it again.

“I’m not sure this move is the best choice for me. I think my time is better spent closer to the church.”

His father thought differently, at least his actions indicated he did, sending him away to live with his uncle while he closed up their house, permanently, he should think. Everything he had ever called his own stuffed into storage or locked up with the house. Though to know for sure what his father thought he would have to be in the same room with the man or even hear his voice, which was not the easiest of tasks these days given his position within the church. Sometimes it seemed like he cared more about being a Father to all than a father to Castiel. But he pushed that thought from his mind. He knew it was selfish. God needed his father more than he did, as did the people he helped but he couldn’t help but feel as if he was being passed down. The nary a second glance his father used to give him while he traveled was now replaced with the orders from another, said to be from him, as to what he wanted them to _do_ with Castiel. A problem that needed solving. Just another soldier in need of orders. And maybe he was. Maybe he was naïve to think that he was more important than of the other parishioners or the hundreds of people that his father helped with the word of God. And as he sat in the back of Jeremiah’s Honda Accord driving into Lawrence Kansas he couldn’t help but feel he was being stuffed away into the back closet until he could be of use like all the things he had grown up calling his own.

Jeremiah only sighed. It was an argument he had heard before. Castiel went to church daily. Reducing that to perhaps once a week with Zachariah and Anna seemed to be borderline sacrilege. He’d heard that too, louder and with the slamming of a bible on a desk for emphasis. He can still hear the echo of the silence to follow in that library when Jeremiah called him back to the present.

“Castiel – check the instructions. Is it this turn or the next?” They were both unfamiliar with Lawrence though it was only an hour away from Kansas City. Castiel suppressed a sigh while he grabbed the scribbled directions from his trench coat pocket.

“US-40 exit, it should say 204 toward Lawrence.” He tried not to hurl as went around the roundabout – his anxiety doubling tenfold when the sign for Lawrence flew by his window. They drove through the college town in no time at all but Castiel didn’t look around at his new home. He looked at his hands. He hated car rides. People weren’t meant to move this fast. You move this fast you make mistakes.

When they arrived at Zachariah’s it all became very detached. Or more so, he should say. Jeremiah took out his bags, one for clothes another for books and set them down on the curb. Zachariah finally came outside after a few minutes and nodded to Castiel with a smile. Castiel tried not to liken it to a snake. And tried harder still to keep the grimace off his face. They did not hug or say much of anything in the way of goodbyes when Jeremiah got into the car. A trusted assistant to his father for years, the man had been by his side through most everything to that point. He might not have liked him but the cold nod and car door slam did little in the way of comfort as he drove away, back home. Back to _their_ home. Or what was his home. He flinched as he watched him drive away. He could feel himself slouch as Zachariah motioned to his bags, letting out all the air in his lungs through his nose. It took two trips to get the duffels inside. He would have taken one in each arm – he was actually quite strong – but the books made the weight very uneven.

The house was unquestionably grey. Dull and clinical, like the man that owned it, he mused, not bothering to flash a smile as Zachariah’s eyes met his. He believed he once heard Zachariah describe it as modern. _A new take on an old design, of course accenting what came before,_ he would always assure with a smile. Zachariah was all about appearances. The house appeared to be beautiful, the outside was quite extraordinary white farmhouse but on the inside, where no one would see, was darkness – only natural light peeked its way through the windows. The walls were even chipping in places and the wood for the staircase looked twenty years old at least, but the furniture was all very contemporary and clean. A new take on an old design. Castiel didn’t know what was quite so wrong about the old design. But of course, no one ever asked him what he thought.

“My room?” Castiel asked trying not to sound presumptuous, though knowing the day he was having he probably failed.

“Since you enjoy astronomy I thought you’d appreciate the attic. I cleared the boxes to one side, I hope that’s alright.” If the walls were chipped and the main stairs were in disrepair how bad must the fold down ladder for the attic be, Castiel thought as he followed Zachariah upstairs. This time they each took a bag, though Castiel was mildly displeased about ending up with the one containing his books. He was pleased to find that at the end of the stairs was a door and that door led to a staircase that went to the attic. _Creepy_ but he had to admit other than the fact that he would never go barefoot the privacy was much appreciated.

They walked up the dark steps in silence, though the creaking floorboards made it anything but soundless. Zachariah had never been one to speak much to him in all the years he’d known him, idle chit chat was neither of their fascinations but Castiel couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss when Zachariah set down his bag and immediately left back down the stairs. Again Castiel felt that acute feeling that he was a problem to be dealt with, a check on someone’s to-do list. He had yet to see Anna. And maybe that was for the best. He hadn’t a clue what he would say to her. When they were children, because they were so close in age they were often lumped together in most everything and nearly inseparable but as time went on, their paths diverged as so slowly, did they. In fact he can’t recall a single time in the past few years where he had seen Anna outside of her Sunday best, when she bothered to show up for Sunday mass or a family function, which there were none too few of. Especially given her _indiscretion_ , as it had come to be called, he hasn’t really seen much of her in the last few months at all.

He let the bag filled with books fall to the floor with a large thud as he surveyed what was to be his new “bedroom”. An old double frame and mattress was positioned jutting out from the only usable wall next to a rather beautiful stain glass window in its own little alcove, window seat and all, though no cushion or blankets laid there now. He took a step closer to realize it was of something, the window. What looked to be an angel grabbing a soul from Hell. The stairs creaked and he jolted. _Calm down_ , he told himself as he breathed in.

“Did I scare you?” Anna asked hesitantly standing at the edge of the stairs. Castiel shook his head, gulping. He busied himself with his bed, fluffing the blankets, shifting the pillow, _avoiding eye contact with Anna_. When he finally did bring his attention back to Anna she was casually looking at the old boxes and furniture that filled more than half of the room. She looked back at him, seemingly not expecting him to say much.

“The window opens,” she mused, motioning to the stain glass. Castiel nodded. Zachariah was right about the attic, Castiel did truly like the window. It made him think of the Church, _of home_.

“It’s really quite beautiful,” Castiel said. Anna turned back to him, surprised he had spoken. She smiled. She looked different than he remembered her. Not really in anything tangible, though she was wearing a low cut white blouse and cargo pants instead of the sun dress he was used to seeing her in. Her dark red hair was hanging lose, curling around her shoulders instead of the conservative bun. No, it was more than that, it was in the way she stood, and the light behind her eyes. She seemed free, with seemed ridiculous, _considering_. He wondered if one act of rebellion could truly bring such inner peace. And then became acutely aware of Jeremiah’s words in the car. Maybe thoughts really were dangerous.

“It’s supposed to be an angel saving a righteous man from Hell – to be honest I think my dad just liked the colors. He saw it in a yard sale of all places, can you believe that?” She seemed to find that endlessly amusing but Castiel wasn’t even entirely sure what a yard sale was. In the community he grew up in such a thing would have been unheard of, but he could figure the gist. People put things out on their yard. And sold them. See. He could do this. People are simple.

“So,” she started awkwardly, “it kind of sucks you got here so late in the summer we could have had more than a day to just hang out.” Castiel’s head tweaked a little to one side.

“Why would I want that?” Her face fell a little as she cracked a joyless smile. Maybe people weren’t simple. She surveyed him then, taking him in as if she were deciding something before she nodded, collecting herself, or steeling herself to her own decision.

“Come on,” she ordered, resigned to her own fate it seemed, as she walked down the stairs. Castiel looked around his room for a moment before he heard “Now, Castiel” and shuffled after her.

“Where are we going?” he asked as she shoved her arms through a dark purple coat, flipping her hair out from inside the collar and slipped on boots. She glanced around the entryway for something or someone.

“Out” she mused, grabbing a blue scarf off the rack and grabbing him by the lapel of his trench coat, pulling him closer. He wordlessly let her pull him, a force of habit long since forgotten more than anything. She wrapped the scarf around his neck twice like she did when he was six and she was seven. Back when nine months was a bigger deal than seventeen and eighteen. It was what her mother did for her. And what no one did for him. He smiled at little at the memory even though he knew it was a million miles from where they were now.

“Shouldn’t we tell your father we’re going somewhere?” Castiel asked as she unbolted the door.

“He’s a smart man. He’ll figure it out.” She said, motioning for him to go before her.

It was late August, the chill was just starting to hang in the air. He wasn’t sure if Anna remembered his fondness for walking or if it was happenstance, but she only slightly glanced at her ‘85 Volkswagen Rabbit before making a sharp left down the street and he was eternally greatful. Castiel made one more glance at the white farmhouse before following after her. He’d never gone anywhere without asking permission. His trepidation got the better of him as he trailed behind her, unable to build up the gusto to ask where they were going again. They fell into a comfortable silence as they walked briskly through neighborhood after neighborhood. After a while of turns and crossed streets he stopped wanting to ask. That was until the houses stopped and through the trees he could see the tops to tombstones. She had walked them to a cemetery. He glanced at her, but if she felt his eyes on her she didn’t turn. They walked through the brick gates of Oak Hill Churchyard with no pomp or circumstance except for immeasurable silence and the occasional crow. Old oaks littered the grounds making it look more like a park than a plot of graves. All except for the silence. The deafening silence was something unique to graveyards. It was not unfamiliar to him and it made him uneasy.

“Why are we here?” Castiel finally asked, his tone more accusing than he intended it.

“I want you to scream, yawp into the abyss,” she said, finally turning to look him in the eyes. She seemed to find nothing strange in the request, as she added “It helps, I promise.”

“What?” Castiel choked, probably displaying more emotion on his face than she’d ever seen from him. “What if someone hears us?”

“We’re among the dead. They can’t hear you, that’s the beauty of it.” Her first sentence seemed to echo between them and she gripped her arm, where he knew long jagged scars marred her skin, “You and me, we’re survivors,”

Frustration built inside him, bubbling to the surface, “I’m not like you,” he spouted, _my wounds are not self-inflicted._ He expected her to turn away, to shake her head, to take them back home but she simply continued, unperturbed by the meaning behind his words.

“You’re angry, that’s good. Let it out or it’s gonna eat you alive.” He stared at her unflinchingly. “You did everything right.” She told him vigorously, “And yet here you are, with the cautionary tale and the bureaucratic father who couldn’t control her.”

“I did everything right” he finally said, “I did everything right” he said it over and over again like a prayer in different volumes, speeds and timbres, seemingly to both himself and her.

“You did everything right” she repeated with vigor. It seemed like a thousand terrible words dancing on the tip of his tongue but he just kept repeating the same four words.

“I did everything right!” He didn’t realize how angry he was until he was screaming it over and over at the top of his lungs until exhaustion took him, breathing in the crisp August air in heaving sighs.

She sat down in the crunchy dry grass, pulling at his sleeve until he joined her. They laid down, looking up at the sky as it turned from light blue to the pinks and oranges of sunset. “Feel better?” she asked after a moment. He didn’t answer. He felt like he could sleep for a month. His eyes soon closed. Lulled by the silence of the dead. It seemed like forever when he heard her get up next to him. He opened his eyes to her dusting off her coat, picking dry grass out of her red hair.

“Come on kid I’ll buy you a burger” he wasn’t that much younger than her, but he indulged her, taking her outstretched hand and being unceremoniously pulled to his feet. As they walked back through the brick gates she said just one more thing before never mentioning it, or this day, again. “Maybe it’ll be a good thing.” He highly doubted there was anything good about moving to Lawrence Kansas.

₪

“People are simple, Sammy” Dean Winchester said between bites, filling his face with cold fries Ellen couldn’t in good conscious sell to people anymore. It’s how they got by when money got tight and as August rolled to a close money was getting very tight. Sam rolled his eyes, Dean’s “words of wisdom” rolling in one ear and out the other as he sipped on his water and doodled on his summer calculus homework. He’d heard this one before, it was Dean’s “don’t worry Sam you’ll make new friends” speech and he wasn’t particularly in the mood to hear it.

“How are they simple, Dean?” Sam mocked in monotone, as if he were the studio audience at a game show. Dean ignored his sarcastic tone and continued.

“You just got to find an in, you know, find something you have in common,” he said between bites. “Start with something easy like television or music, you’ll be fine.” His green eyes were bright with amusement as he motioned to the sign that hung un-centered above the jukebox for as long as either of them could remember and read, “Just plug em’ in and turn em’ on.” Sam was sure the last bit was supposed to be for his benefit, some relation to his technologically wired brain. But at the moment he didn’t even want to attempt to muddle through Dean’s mixed metaphors and Dean’s smile looked more tired than convincing. He played along, though, in his own way.

“Yeah I’m not so sure. People aren’t machines. They don’t really come with on-off switches _unfortunately,_ ” he muttered the last part under his breath but it was far too loud in the Roadhouse for Dean to have heard him. He’d read the same sentence in his textbook five times because of an overactive pool game behind him but he knew why they were waiting. At ten the owner of the joint goes home and Ellen can slip them something more than fries and waters. He can’t even remember if Dean had told him about Ellen and her daughter Jo’s little charade, he’d figured out so long ago it simply became the ritual of their lives. But if it made Dean feel better, him not knowing, he’d play innocent. From the repeated pep talks Dean seemed to be pretty desperate for Sam to see the bright side of not attended Rochester this year, a private institution Sam had been passive aggressively lamenting about for weeks. An hour outside of Lawrence, it was where everyone Sam had ever known was going to. A private institution they did not have the money to send him to. He couldn’t help but see it as the signed death certificate of his dream of getting out of this town. He could practically hear Dean in his head telling him he was too young to be this jaded. But it wasn’t his fault his life was over.  Jo walked out from the back room, apron off. Her shift must have ended because she looked like a weight had just been lifted from her shoulders as she strolls to their table.

“Usually I just keep pushing buttons,” Dean emphasized as he swirled up out of his chair, poking at Sam’s stomach. Sam flinched away with a glare when he spilt a drop of water on the corner of his book, “until something works, sounds pretty mechanical to me.” Sam just shook his head. His mouth betrayed him, twisting into a grin as Dean flashed him his infamous hundred watt smile. Jo came up and bumped hips with him playfully.

“Sup Winchesters?” she greeted, tucking the few short blond tendrils that had fallen out of her ponytail behind her ear. She motioned Dean to the corner of the bar where the jukebox sat. Dean glanced longingly at the pool game he had considered hustling for a few extra bucks but followed in tow after another moment’s glance. He motioned for Sam to stay, pointing at his book, pushing up imaginary glasses, that Sam himself did not even have, and then motioning that he was watching him. Sam just rolled his eyes and gave him one of his famous “bitch-faces” as his sneer, over the years, had been affectionately renamed. _That kid is gonna be one hell of a scary teenager_ , Dean mused, _if he isn’t already_. He threw himself down at the stool next to Jo and sighed into the comfortable silence.

“He gonna be okay?” she asked, nodding to Sam. Dean shook his head, sighing again.

“I don’t know. I hope so. He had his heart set on going. I just wish there was some way I could make it happen.”

“I guess there’s no sense in me telling you that that’s not your responsibility.”

“None,” he said with a tired smile.

“How’s work?” she asked, changing subjects as she flagged down her mom and motioned her head to Dean while he wasn’t looking. Ellen nodded and ducked back into the kitchen.

“Fine, I’ve been working as many hours as Bobby will give me but now that football’s started up it’s like juggling chainsaws trying to keep everything above water,” Dean joked but the weariness in his tone made him even more tired than he already was. Bobby Singer, the owner of the local salvage yard and mechanics shop, had given him a shot and employed him as soon as the kid could wield a wrench. He was a good friend of the family, notwithstanding his fallout with Dean’s father, but as it stood, who hasn’t had one of those. Even with his former MVP father breathing down his neck to the importance of discipline and focus in athletics he couldn’t help but feel his time would be better spent in the garage making actual money than on the field. But saying that, especially when his father took such a personal interest in his football seemed a whole hell of a lot like picking sides, which he didn’t have the heart to do.

Ellen set a burger in front of him and his stomach lunged in anticipation.

“Oh, give this one to Sammy I can catch the next–” he started, before Ellen cut him off.

“Already taken care of, you Winchester martyrs, I swear. Your brother said the same thing,” she muttered, shaking her head. He couldn’t help it, he practically inhaled the burger. It was covered in avocados which he didn’t care for but he was not in the business of turning down free food.

“I promise, Ellen, as soon as my pay check comes in–” He knew he probably should have said, “as soon as my father comes home,” but it didn’t roll off the tongue as much of an offer. He may be less jaded than Sam but that didn’t mean he was naïve. He knew better than anyone what it meant to wait for John Winchester to roll into town. She dismissed his promises with an “mmhm” as she walked back to the kitchen, not because she thought he wouldn’t make good on them, but because they both knew she wouldn’t take his money when he did offer it. He glanced over to Sam, who had finished his burger and salad and was now nodding off into his calculus book.

“I gotta get him home before he starts to drool,” he said with a smile. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” she promised. Watching him go and poke his brother’s side, making him jerk awake and almost drop his book.

“Come on sleeping beauty time to hit the road”

They returned to a dark house. Sam must have forgotten to switch on the porch light, _again_. He was of course oblivious, playing what sounded to be Angry Birds on his phone as Dean fumbled with the keys in the dark, using his cigarette lighter as a makeshift torch. Dean gave him a pointed look as the rest of the house was just as dark as the outside stoop, wondering if he has purposely turned them off as part of another environmentalist kick.

His phone vibrated in his pocket as he set his keys in the bowl by the entryway, closing and locking the door behind Sam as he stumbled in the door like a zombie, screen lighting up his face. He pulled out his own phone and glanced at the screen. Fucking Lydia was turning into more of an event that he originally sought after. _Hey what’re you doing tonight?_ Not you, he thought, ignoring the message and slipping his phone back into his pocket, walking over to the kitchen counter. One new message. He pressed play before he could think to steel himself.

“Hey Dean, it –it looks like it’s gonna be another week,” A long pause. “The payout is just too good to let go. Tell Sammy I’m sorry about missing his first day, we’ll be sure to do something special when I get home.” The rest of the message was the usual. Coordinates to his location. “Look out for Sam,” words so familiar they hardly needed speaking.

He knew being a bounty hunter took him out of county, and occasionally out of state chasing down the scum of the earth but when a few days turns into a few weeks for that big pay out Dean couldn’t help but sweat the details, especially since heating, cooling, electric and their bellies surely did.

“How long this time?” Dean hesitated before answering.

“Another week, at most.”

“So three” Sam said, shaking his head as he huffed out a mirthless laugh.

“Sammy–” Dean started.

“Whatever it’s not like we haven’t heard his crap before. I’ll be upstairs.”

He watched him go, feeling immensely tired. He pressed delete on the message without writing down the coordinates. He tended to not place importance on temporary things.

 

 


End file.
